Japanese Animation moves to Live Action Disastrously

Rating: 1/10 (4 October 2013)

SPOILER ALERT
May the drift be with you
To be kind, this could be categorized as an homage to Toho Studios. The Japanese have been fascinated with movie monsters ever since Godzilla. But, alas, this is formulaic, trite and just how much monster fighting can one person take? I love it when alien monsters have a complete repertoire of WWE moves and MMA moves. I guess Martial Arts are soooo universal that they transcend space-time. I love it when mechanical, human guided robots smash their metal fists together. Oh where is Robbie when we need him?
The characters were right out of Dragonball Z (The TV series.) and many other children oriented Japination shows. This movie is visually stunning which shows the power of CGI. It is visually impacting but not compelling.
Back in the 1930s, one EE "doc" Smith, a doughnut and pastry engineer for food companies began writing extended Sci-Fi. One of his extended series was called "the Lensmen" and it was about as juvenile as this: No sex or romance or any kind of relationship. Crazy, hyper mad scientist types, criminals who don't give a whit for humanity and are willing to plunder anything for a supposed clientele of eager people who can't wait to get the booty while their world disintegrates around them. and on and on. Smith never had "Star Wars" or "Harry Potter" and movie SCI-FI outside of Lang's "Metropolis" was pretty lame. We have models we can work off of but this movie only takes an animation form and adds better graphics. In a way, the cheezy Toho movies were actually more interesting. they were for kids and had kids as principals in the movie.
Let's box and engage in fisticuffs instead of using technology as advanced as the robots appear to be to kill the monsters. Let's throw monsters around instead of zapping them with lasers. Let's wait until they appear instead of working on ways to close the rift. Let's call analog digital and vice versa. Let's suspend everything we could know and should know about human dynamics and just get it on with a bunch of monsters that aren't even that original. They are rendered better though.
I give this movie a 1 for graphics. The director should be ashamed for stooping so low as to pander to whatever audience of seven-year olds he is aiming towards.
This movie is so trite that it even has a dog barking approval at the end. All the money could have been put towards something with real imagination but maybe we as people just want to wallow in wrestling beat downs.